Quoting: PatolaScummVM is an incredible engine. I am not usually enthusiastic for old games, but in this case, I have to say, Ultima VIII was an amazing RPG.

I liked how they made the environment more interactive with all the climbing and jumping (at least after they got the controls sorted out), and the way you had to prepare spells from reagents wasn't too bad either. But compared to Ultima VII, it was a big disappointment. Outside of Tenebrae the world felt small and empty, and there wasn't much in the way of story or side quests. In fact, it was so short that I had to play it twice. And it didn't really get any better the second time round ...

So no, not going to revisit this one.

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Quoting: ShmerlI think engines support, ease of use and cost of porting haven't been the blocker for quite a while already. Let's assume they are almost negligible even. Somehow that wasn't enough to boost the number of big native ports for the desktop.

I guess it does take a bit of planning from the start to make a big production work across platforms. Not all engine features are available or on par for different targets, not to mention 3rd-party middleware that is used in addition. Coupled with unfamiliarity of Linux and its seemingly fragmented landscape, which makes it hard to estimate the required effort for user support and potential platform specific fixes and updates, I guess there is no strong financial incentive to make a Linux port, even if in some cases it might be as easy as hitting that export button in Unity.

Quoting: ShmerlSomeone like Valve should put more weight behind pushing for native Linux ports, like Google did it with Stadia.

The big advantage with Stadia is that it is a single unified platform. I guess from a developer's perspective, it's just like another console. It likely comes with its own quirks (related to the streaming and whatever APIs Google is offering on top), but at least it's a well defined ecosystem. It's also a system that has the potential to reach a huge audience, and I'm pretty sure Google will make it worthwhile for developers to throw in their support, at least at this point in time.

In comparison, Valve offers the Steam runtime as a baseline to develop for, but I guess that's not as comprehensive. There's also little Valve can do to increase the potential audience (they certainly did try with their Steam machines), so the only thing left would be compensating developers for delivering a Linux port. Maybe they should do that, but I just can't see how they could benefit from that, so there's little incentive.

So when all is said and done, it still boils down to a chicken and egg problem. As long as Linux remains a niche desktop platform (even outside gaming), it's just not a worthwhile target. What's needed is a compelling reason for people to use Linux. For me that's privacy, security and control, but I fear those aren't so compelling for the average populace. Barring any spectacular Linux-exclusive must-have fad-of-the-day, for the majority, the most compelling reason would likely be that it comes preinstalled on their new PC or Laptop. And I'm pretty sure Microsoft and the manufacturers will not let that happen.

As sad as it may sound, all we can really hope for is staying in the race, and for that stuff like Proton or Vulkan and the like will help. But unless some technology comes along that gives Linux an edge, or Microsoft messes up so badly that Linux becomes preferable to Windows, there won't be a big increase in the user base, and without that we won't be leaving that niche any time soon.

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Quoting: Perkeleen_VittupääTechnobabylon also recommended for genre fans!!

Yes, absolutely! Though with the drawback that it does not come with native Linux support.

Another one that's different in style, but thematically also quite fitting would be State of Mind. That even runs natively.

VirtuaVerse is certainly something I want to play. So far I had only seen screenshots, and they looked somewhat uninspiring, but seeing the game in motion in the linked video quickly changed my mind. And the soundtrack!

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For the majority I've been playing The Bard's Tale IV. It's plenty fun, but plagued by technical issues.

Yesterday I went back to F1 2017 for another race, but still a couple more to go before I can complete the season.

Also started playing Counterfeit Monkey, a text adventure with quite interesting puzzles.

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Quoting: RedfaceI had a look at my 20.04 installs regarding python. My desktop has /usr/bin/python which dpkg -S /usr/bin/python says is from the package python-is-python2. The description of that package is:

Quote[...]
This package will be installed upon upgrades to Ubuntu 20.04, if
DEPRECATED python2 was installed.
[...]

That explains that. It was easy enough to figure out and fix the problem, so no big deal. I just checked and mercurial is on the way to add support for Python 3, so hopefully 2.7 can finally die, at least on my system :-).

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With all the positive reactions here, I forced the upgrade from 18.04, as it was a relatively fresh install anyway. I think it's the first time that upgrading from one LTS to the next didn't break the graphics driver, so that's a positive :-).

It didn't, however, go totally smooth. For one it came up with python2 as the default interpreter instead of python3 (the only package actually still depending on python2 being mercurial, which I cannot get rid of, unfortunately). That caused unity-mail to crash, which is still my preferred notification app.

My gnome extensions also weren't updated automatically, and while a notification popped up that updates were available, it took me a while to figure out that what looked like a settings button was actually the button to load the update. But that's on Gnome, not Ubuntu. Also, for some reason, gnome-shell-extension-prefs was not or no longer installed, so extension preferences did not work initially.

But the worst was the new theme. I hate black in particular and dark themes in general. So I switched to the light variant, only to find that all console windows still sported a black window border. Well, turns out console has its own theme settings that for some reason is not following the system default. At least the upgrade preserved my desktop background, but I still have to change grub to show something other than black & white.

And finally, none of the few PPAs I use is yet available for 20.04. Though I guess this will be only a matter of time.

On the whole, I'm content with the updated system, but there's nothing to be ecstatic about.

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Quoting: MohandevirSorry for my ignorance, but is there some kind of appimage store? I really find the appimage concept convenient, but is there something for the automatic updates aspect?

The one I'm aware of is AppImageHub. Not sure about automatic updates, though. My own stuff is no longer in active development, so I never really have given that aspect much consideration.

And as a user, I try to get everything from either the official repository or a PPA.

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Quoting: SchattenspiegelStill don't see a usecase for snap (or fatpak) on the desktop that would not be better (less time, less space, more reliable functionality) solved by Appimage if you do not get a native package.

Amen! I've been distributing Linux binaries in AppImage format for quite a while, and I really like how they're small and self-contained, with no daemon required in the background for them to run.

I had looked at both snap and flatpak as alternatives, but the whole idea of distributing binaries in the first place was for stuff to just work across distributions with minimal dependencies.

In general though, I'll want to use the regular binaries, managed via the package repository. With the image based applications, if some library they include has vulnerabilities, all the applications need to be patched and updated individually. With regular programs, the library in question can be updated and all the dependent applications are golden.

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I've had my eyes on that for a while, but I fear it could be quite depressing ... will wait for some reviews. The style looks ... stylish, however!

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Quoting: scainewhich is based on Ubuntu 18.04 - which MiniGalaxy doesn't support due to, apparently, a lack of an up to date pygobject

That's what broke it for me as well.

While Wine support is nice in theory, in practice if I have to use wine for the game, I can also use wine to run the official GOG client.

Support for (incremental) updates of Linux games would be a more valuable feature in my opinion. But as it stands, plenty of games either have their final patch available by the time I get around to playing them, or, if it's really a game I must have at release, I might already be done before the first patch is ready :-).

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